Career update stuff, just in the interests of transparency; I’ve decided to wait a year for my attempt to go up for promotion to clinical full professor, mostly because while I have the Jump Space book under contract, it’s not due to be published until the fall (or early next year), and it’ll be a much stronger case if reviewers have that book in hand. (Ideally published to glowing reviews in the field, but we’ll have to wait and see on that, won’t we…?)
I’m totally okay with this decision; it has some financial impact, but I’d rather go up with a strong case and sail through, rather than be potentially fighting headwinds.
I also really appreciate my chair, who managed to talk me through the process and the advantages / disadvantages, while also making me feel appreciated and supported. Good colleagues are a great blessing.
As a side note, though, I was trying to figure out who in the field would be able to write letters for me as outside references — and it turns out the list is VERY small. Because I’m at a R1 institution, they’d be looking for full professors who are also at R1’s, ideally, and in both science fiction studies and South Asian lit., that is really not a lot of people. (Like, under two dozen in each category, I think.)
Which, I guess isn’t actually that surprising, when you think about what subjects have traditionally been more prestigious in the field, which are newer topics, or newer to gain legitimacy. But it does mean that you end up with something of a pipeline problem, if there are very few people who can potentially ‘vet’ the next generation. Interesting, and a little frustrating.